Kweznuz

Look, Microsoft Kinect, Jimmydunes and I were simply shooting the breeze about real estate - you just happened to be in the room.  We never asked you to chime in with your quirky “Negative-I-Am-A-Meat-Popsicle” worldview.  I don’t know what you thought you heard, but something of a triumph on getting absolutely none of the conversation correct at all.  

Well done!

House Hunt Recap

During our search for a new home I have become more familiar than I care to be about the different neighborhoods in the area.  They all seem to have some highfalutin titles that make everywhere sound like the names were grabbed from particularly uninspired 2-word Mad Libs responses.  My wife seems to have mastered them, but they all just blur together for me. 

So, instead of trying to remember if the last house we saw was in Shady Pines, Sheetrock Hills, Rock Ridge, or Radiator Springs, we decided to give nicknames to the houses themselves.  Here are a few:

Squirrel House - This house was a sample model on the fourth fairway of a local golf course.  As attractive as it was picturing myself screaming “Hey, you old people, get out of my yard!” for eight hours a day, there was another problem.  As we were leaving I heard a scrabbling up near the roofline that was coming from at least two squirrels darting in and out of a slightly-larger-than-squirrel-sized hole in one of the gables.  Fun!  But wait... Near the hole... Is that bat guano?  Yup, looks like it... Next.

Showcase Showdown House - My wife calls this one “Ravine House” because of the alarming, toddler-enticing 45-degree drop-off in the backyard that led down to a swampy inlet (Hey, dad, my soccer ball went down the hill of poison ivy and into the water moccasin farm again... Can you go get it?). I called it “Rotten Tree House” because of the two near-death 60-foot poplar trees leaning in the most expensive direction possible.  Since the sellers were throwing in a pool table, three flat screen televisions,  a desk, a set of lawn furniture, and, believe it or not, a 2004 Volvo, we decided that “Showcase Showdown” was a much better name.  

If you think about it, these are not the actions of someone selling a house.  These are the actions of someone fleeing something.  Whether it is “the long arm of the law” or “Tony ‘Grievous Bodily Harm’ Masconi” remains to be seen, but not by us.

Swamp House - An otherwise perfect house with yet another 45-degree drop-off near a swamp, this one straight off the back porch.  Look, realtor people, stop calling it a “marsh”.  Here’s how you can tell the difference between a “marsh” and a “swamp”.  It’s a “marsh” if it is in a romantically desolate watercolor painting.  It is a “swamp” if you are actually in or near it. 

Olive Garden House - Horrifyingly realistic Mediterranean-themed tromp-l’oeil murals upstairs and down shot “OMG, Hire Painters, For The Love of All That Is Holy, Hire Painters Now” to the top of the “to do list” with a bullet.  This house would have been fine, but there were other... complications... aside from rotten window frames and an unexplained craving for breadsticks after we left the place.  Let’s just say there was some unpleasantness.  Let’s also say our lawyer advised us not to write anything more about it.  Period.

Power Line House - We didn’t even go in here.  The place had a really nice back yard and was about 200 feet from a huge set of high tension line towers.  No.  No.  No.

1313 Mockingbird Lane - We did go in here.  A bank-owned property.  We were put off by the ant-farm-like floor plan, the huge cracks all throughout the brickwork, the laughably high price tag, and the boxes of “Squatter-B-Gone” peppered throughout the place by whatever poor slob got stuck with the job of trying to make this structure even remotely sellable.  We would say the bank would be lucky to get half of what they are asking for it.

Colonel Expletive Deleted House - We wanted this house.  It was a fine house.  The guy living in it, though, was unwilling to move out before “the end of July... maybe later”.  See, he is waiting for his final military orders to come through.  He is getting a $50,000 moving allowance and doesn’t want to risk losing the money by leaving the place early.  Go ahead and read those last two sentences as many times as you need to to get them to make sense to you, cuz I am at a total loss.  Fifty grand?!?! Where the hell is he being stationed? Low Earth Orbit?  A palace under the sea?  A magnificently appointed Zeppelin permanently parked over the Grand Canyon?  

After we balked at the idea of living in this single bedroom efficiency for two months (probably more) and walked away, their realtor sent the second-most-condescending letter I have ever read to our realtor. It informed us that by walking away now we risk (get this) “losing the house of your dreams because you are not willing to wait a few extra weeks.  Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and we (the sellers) may still be here if things don't work out for us elsewhere”.   

I’m like, look, I don’t know what kind of crummy dreams you have, but a house possessing a room which, with a lot of work, could make for a cool TV room someday does not constitute a “dream house”.  It is an adequate house.  My “dream house” is 10,000 square feet, has an Olympic-sized swimming pool, dual matching glass and bronze elevators, an observatory, a helipad, and sits square in the middle of a hundred-acre vineyard.  In my dream I would fly the house you are trying to sell in on weekends to use as my servants’ temporary guest quarters.  You need better dreams.

Home Freaking Sweet Home - Hopefully we close on this one at the end of the month, but we have been down that path before (see Olive Garden House above), so we will see... Stay tuned.

Another Delightful Spring Shower

Last week, amongst the stacks of pre-move-out cardboard boxes and rows of rows of random and probably completely unnecessary items we have accumulated over the years, we hunkered down in the hallway and waited for the most recent tempest to pass.

See, for years our neighborhood had been the target of hyper-local unrelentingly violent weather.  A two-mile-wide corridor of blood red on the radar map had us at ground zero more often than not.  During a storm, the nearby high school would report half an inch of rain.  We would get half a foot.   The rare snows would be the same way - one or two inches four miles away, eleven inches at the house.  

Bizarre.

The downstairs hallway was probably the safest place to be at the old homestead in the event of a typical “shower”, or, as we liked to call them "Jeebus-H-Rice-Doesn’t-It-Ever-Just-Freaking-RAIN-Here?"  Of course, no place is 100% secure against an onslaught of the elements but I refused to have the newspaper headline "Run-of-the-Mill Cantaloupe-Sized Hail Slaughters Clearly Unprepared Family - Neighbors Not Surprised" become a reality.

Here’s a typical weather-related news blurb from the useless local weather morons:

A cold front is pushing through which will provide some much needed rain to the area.  Temperatures will drop from a high of 97 degrees to 60 degrees over the next couple of hours which should bring welcome relief from the heat, then climb back to the 90s just in time for yardwork tomorrow.  After the break, how a recent six percent hike on parking fees at the local zoo could affect your wallet this summer.  Stay tuned!

Here’s our typical reaction honed by years of experience:

Bring in the lawn chairs!  Shut the garage door!  Batten down the hatches!  Lash the Escort to the driveway!  Our wills are up to date, right, honey?  RIGHT?!?!  They’re calling for a 20% chance of light rain for parts of the viewing area!!!  Have the neighbors finished that ark yet?

I’m not being fair.  Actually, calling the weather folks “useless” does a complete disservice to things that are genuinely useless.  They would have to really improve significantly in order to be considered for the title “useless”, and, even then, only at a probationary level.

These guys actually think that “parts of the viewing area may get some rain tomorrow” is an actionable piece of data.  Should I mow the lawn now?  Can I wait?  Shouldn’t it matter that the viewing area is, like, the size of New England? If you are truly interested in bringing us up to the minute weather news from your Super Ninja 3000 Quadruple Doppler Radar Technotron or whatever, why do you put the info online in 5 minute increments, and then only when that info is already 15 minutes old?

I guess having the TV on does provide some info, though.  The meaningless lull of the bald guy or the tall guy (depending on what local news station you watch) is comforting as they prattle on and on about unconfirmed reports of dime-sized hail in tiny burgs seventy miles away. It is less soothing when the weather guy’s voice quavers and says “If my wife and family are watching, now would be a good time to take cover in the place we talked about before” (that actually happened about a year ago).

So, as the cul-de-sac out front disappeared in a grey mist of nearly horizontal rain (sigh... again) we calmly and with a tone of utterly transparent joy and exuberance say to our three-year-old "Ok, buddy let's go to the hallway!  You can play with the iPad if you want to!  Sound like fun?  Here you go... just BOY HOWDY WOW!  Did you hear that?  That lightning was super close, huh?! Hahaha!  I can see the smoke from the tree it hit out back!   Cool, huh?  Hey, why don't I go get your sleeping bag - it'll be just like camping out!  Awesome!  I'll go get it right after I change my underwear!  Can I get you a snack?"

I mentioned before that we are in the process of moving.  The house sold faster than we hoped and much, much faster than we expected. The last item in the list of things to do was the septic tank inspection - it passed, of course, but the real test was the eight (yes, eight) inches of rain that came almost immediately afterwards.  Again, it passed with flying colors.  Or at least it passed with a complete lack of floating colors.

The ditch was filled with quick-moving rainwater runoff from the forest behind the house so the boy and I made a tinfoil boat, peopled it with a multi-colored ping-pong ball "family", and set it on it's merry way.  In his head it is out to sea by now.  In reality, it probably got hung up on a fallen branch shortly after it turned the first corner where it will stay for the next 500 years when it will be discovered and its "purpose" grossly misinterpreted by archeologists.

Hmm... In retrospect maybe I should have spaced out the last two paragraphs a bit...

Other than the rain, the “local viewing area” sponsored a waterspout that turned into a tornado.  Depending on which news outlet you went to, it caused either “minor damage to the facade of a yacht club” or “completely leveled the city of Hampton, chuckling evilly and salting the fields in its mighty wake”.  Since I drive through that area every day, I am guessing it was more on the “exciting but inconvenient” side of that coin.

Well, regardless, I write this now from the comfort of a single-bedroom efficiency (more on that later), and I see they are calling for showers for “the area” over the next three days.  I wonder if I should contact our old neighbors and ask if I can lend a hand hauling gopher wood or converting board-feet to cubits or something...

Quittersmith

I have been playing Rocksmith to the exclusion of all other Xbox games ever since I bought the title and my guitar nine months ago.  Sure, I still threw the occasional bird at a pig now and then but I didn't want to get side-tracked for days or weeks on end by pretending to be some hyper-violent "concierge to the world" in Saint's Row 3 or whatever.

I used to play pretty much every day for at least an hour and a half.  Sometimes there would be marathon sessions of three or four hours on the weekends.  I looked forward to getting my butt kicked every other Saturday or so over at Jimmydunes' house during multi-player sessions.  It wasn't about the score, though.  Well, it was in the rare instances I was winning, of course (I'm only human), but mostly it was about the playing.

The difficulty level ramped up quite a bit in a short period of time but I was holding my own just fine.  It felt awesome. But no sooner did I write my article borderline-bragging about my progress after I hit Level 8 that I hit a wall.

I Got Mine by the Black Keys is, technically, one of the easiest songs in the game.  The last time it was in my setlist months and months ago I needed a measly 45k or so to pass and it took me forever.  Once I got the opening barre chords, the main chord progression, and some of the solo down, I was able to barely eke out enough points after dozens and dozens of attempts to move on.

I was shocked to see it re-appear in my new setlist at a whopping 90k!  That was a tremendous (and seemingly unreasonable) jump but, surely, I had improved well enough to crush out this largely repetitive pentatonic-based ditty.  Heck, I'd probably be able to play this in Master Mode in short order. Right?

Since I only play the songs and arrangements that are in my current setlist, enough time passes where I forget most of the music by the time the tune re-appears at its new, higher level.  Even so, I usually score 20% higher on my first run-through than the level I struggled to reach during my last attempt.  

Evidence of progress right there!  Sweet!

Yeah.... Not this time.  I was barely able to hit the score I had before.  Well, no worries.  I'll just try again.  Huh.  A little better, but not much.  Dozens and dozens more playthroughs and hours and hours of riff practice only got me to about 70k or so, which is where I sit now.

This song has a "simple" pentatonic portion that, for some reason, has turned into the musical equivalent of a tongue twister for me. I am just too undisciplined (for now) to run it consistently.

The mathematical part of me understands the concept of "infinity".  I am perfectly comfortable with the idea that some things are immeasurably big or immeasurably small. It wasn't until I hit this wall, though, that I truly knew what "never" feels like.

I am not the only one whose joy is taking a hit here. During the opening chords of one of my offline practice sessions a couple of weeks ago, I saw my three-year-old son perform what can only be described as the most sarcastic, mocking dance in the whole wide world.  It's impossible to describe in text, so you are just going to have to take my word for it - it was hilarious.  

Fast-forward to late last week.  I was sitting on the couch yet again plinking out the "simple" pentatonic portion, waiting for my kid to get out of the bath and get changed for night-time.  He came into the room in his PJs, looked at me holding the guitar, and sighed "Don't you want to do something fun instead, dad?"

Yes.  Yes I do.  Anything but play this damn song anymore.

I went to Jimmydunes' place a couple of times this Memorial Day weekend.  He helped me change out my strings and we "jammed" for six or seven hours over a couple of days playing whatever songs and arrangements we felt like.  It was a blast.  It was fun again.

As I told you before, I am not musically inclined (I ain't got rhythm, yo).  I also told you before that I don't quit.  Only one of those things is still true. 

I am going to give up the Level 9 “New Guitar Challenge” I made with my wife.  I still think I won’t remove songs from the setlist, but I will jump at the chance to lower the qualifying score on songs that are killing me.  Outside of the gigs, I will play what I want in whatever arrangement I choose (there are still about 90 arrangements I have not touched).  I might even start getting some DLC.

As far as the song goes, eventually I will get it.  Eventually, I will become disciplined enough to run through this song at 90k with very little difficulty. Eventually, I will go back, read this article, and wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

In the meantime, I cheerfully present this apropos clip.  Enjoy!

Houselessness

Picture  your reaction if a gypsy fortune teller (you know... the kind you see all the time working at carnivals in cartoons but never, ever in real life) were to say to you: 

Ahhh, yes... The clouds are parting. I see you... Far in the future... You are fifty years old...  Your hair and beard are both greying... It is raining a little... You are dressed as a woman, dancing on a street-corner, happily waving at traffic...

You might be angry and insulted, and you would certainly be dismissive : "Ain't no way that crazy broad is right.  Why would I be dressed as a chick?! Ahhhh... she's probably drunk or high or sumptin'".  Thirty years later there you are, the gruff, temporarily laid off welder, wearing a Statue of Liberty costume outside of a local tax preparation office, trying to appear cheerful in the freezing February drizzle as you go through your dance routine again. 

It's amazing how time and perspective turns "Oh, that'll never happen" into "Wow. That happened. In retrospect I really, really should have seen that coming from, like, a billion miles away. "

What does this have to do with me?  Well, I'll tell you. I mentioned already that I am in the process of moving. Now, here's the screwed-up sounding part. If all goes according to plan (according to plan, mind you!) my status will change from "homeowner" to "homeless war veteran" a little less than two weeks from now!

Those of you that know me also know that label is technically true in the same way that a shot glass filled with English Leather is technically an alcoholic beverage.  Wait.  I’ve used that metaphor before... Let’s try: It’s “true” using the same rules that allow James Carville to be qualified as “humanoid”, instead.

Meh.  Weak.  But you get the point: The label is 100% accurate... It’s just not very “true”.

But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t milk it for all it’s worth, right?  Oh, sure, you could yell “stolen valor” this and “patently fraud” that, but why can’t I have my piece of the pie, too? Where is the crime in finally having the chance to pursue my passion of drunkenly yelling free-form jazz sounds into the car windows of motorists helplessly stopped at red lights until they give me cash?

Lawyers and police officers need not answer that last one.

Hmmm... Now that I think about it,  I hope I don't have to share a streetcorner with one of those tax time Uncle Sams, cuz some of those fellas can really groove. I mean, have you seen these guys? I'm talking pharmaceutical-grade-Red-Bull level dancing, here.  

I... I can't compete with that.  I’m gonna need a hook.  

I’ve got my Sharpie.  I’ve got my cardboard.  I’m just tapped for ideas on what to write.  I want to say to the world “I want your money.  In no way do I deserve it, and, although I am capable of doing so, I would really rather not work for it.”  If you’ve got an idea let me know.  Keep it clean, please. 

Well... Flawlessly-ish...

Yeah, I know, I am probably the last person in the world that should be pointing out typos... The rest of the four-page color brochure this came from was just so beautifully done, I couldn't resist.

More Fridge Stuff

So, what’s all this, then?  More stuff for The Fridge? 

Sigh... Fine.  Let’s do this.

January 17, 2012

According to him, this is a note to a parent from one of his teachers describing some minor, unspecified bad behavior that one of his female school chums allegedly committed.  He says it starts off "Dear Raven's Mommy and Daddy.  Raven was a twinkling star today..." but the narrative starts off a little muddled and is super-hard to follow after that - the "crime" changing and growing less and less lucid with each retelling.

We are not sure why he was trying to frame the little girl but some clues make it apparent that this is an obvious forgery.  See, when his teacher does send home notes to parents they are usually a) written on a smaller plain white piece of paper b) written in  a single color of pencil or pen and c) not encoded in a script comprised of a combination of English, Greek, Linear B, Gregg Shorthand, Elvish, and possibly Klingon symbols.

April 11, 2012

It's now a few months later and, although his handwriting is still atrocious, it is still better than yours or mine when we pretend to "sign our name" in the little box on the scanner at the grocery store.

Here he used the craft box at school to attempt to write out a sentence about a pig.  According to his teachers, they didn't help him at all. Frankly, I'm not sure they needed to say that... The gap-toothed yokels that ran his previous daycare, however, wish they could wordsmith at this level.  Hell, those jokers would probably have tried to claim this work as their own...

Hey,I know it's not perfect. The sentence structure is non-traditional and the letter order is a little avant-garde but you gotta admit it is a good attempt for a three-year-old.  I am a little stumped, though, about the last bit.

I mean, sure,  it might be worth 158 points on a Triple Word Score, but I am afraid I am totally gonna have to "challenge", here.  I am definitely not going to try to pronounce it because I'm pretty certain there is a chance that doing so might call forth a demon or send me back to the fifth dimension or something. 

Regardless, it’s pretty obvious he totally phoned it in.  Well, I suppose a few days in "the Box" will teach him to focus a little better.

I will let you know how it turns out.

Puzzle for Charity Removed

Since no one solved the most recent puzzle by the May 18th deadline, the Puzzle for Charity has been removed.  

I will post more information on this and update the appropriate articles as time permits.

Also, expect more changes to the sidebar "soon".

I Before E, Except When It Isn't

We are slogging through the process of teaching our young son to read and I am beginning to wonder if giving someone the gift of literacy is worth the effort if the language you are working with is English.

I would have though this would have been easier.  I mean, he has known that those sticks and squiggles we call "letters" have had some sort of meaning since before he was a year and a half old.  The first ones he could name were "A" (primacy effect, I guess) and "X" (thanks, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse treasure hunt episode!). He knew the alphabet song soon afterwards and could identify all uppercase and lowercase letters and the sounds they allegedly make sometime before he turned two and a half. 

I say "allegedly" because this stupid language is rife with land-mines  for someone who is new to English.  This is especially true if that person is also new to the concept of "there are exceptions to every rule - probably even this one - so you should pretty much ignore most things people tell you... Except this, of course".  To you or me, that's pretty much our world in a nutshell. To a three-year-old, it sounds like you are just making it up as you go along. 

An aside, here.  If you are ever cornered by a three-year-old and are asked a question you don't have a snap, official sounding answer to (when you die does what you are holding go to Heaven with you, why does Darth Vader wear a cape, etc.), watch for a subtle head turn away about five seconds into your "ummmmm" filled response.  Lacking the language skills to do so directly, this is the closest they can come to tiredly sighing "Once again, I ask a simple question and, once again, you don't have a blanking clue what you are talking about, do you?  You disgust me."

Where was I?  Oh, yeah...  Land-mines. 

A famous land-mine example is the argument that the made-up word "ghoti" should be pronounced "fish": 'gh' as in rough, 'o' as in lemon, and 'ti' as in station.  Another great example is the song Crazy ABCs by BNL  - "A" is for "aisle", "B" is for "bdellium", "C" is for "czar", etc. Yet another is the...um...relentlessly thorough bit by Gallagher talking about the difficulties a kid has learning to read, but you can watch that one without me. I think the routine is, like, six and a half hours long, so... you know... enjoy. 

Did you know that, in ancient times, our species had neither the heightened science nor the sufficient leisure time to develop their weird customs into a true society?  Did you also know that previous sentence violates the "I before E" rule ten times? It would have been more, but I couldn't figure out how to shoehorn "eigenvalues" or "Keith" into there.  Anyway, Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive list of rule violations. 

I try to be aware of these problems ahead of time and keep it very simple like in the chalkboard you see above.  Most of the time I do okay but recently, without thinking it through, I started one of our lessons by trying to get him to spell the words for numbers.  Of course we started with the word "one" and, of course, he started to sound it out: "w..." 

I said "No, no, no... Not 'W'.. 'One' starts with 'O', not 'W'. Well, 'won... w-o-n, like after you win something, does, but not the number 'one'.  You know, forget that for now. Let's try 'two' ... No, wait, that does have a 'w' but it's silent, plus you have the whole 'to' and 'too' thing thrown in there.  Hmmm, 'three' is a little long, 'four' has the same problem as 'two', 'five' has that silent 'e' thing... Hey, you wanna go ride your bike instead?"

"Yes!" he responded.

"Yeah, me too.  Get your helmet and let's go. We'll pick this up again later."

Radio Silence

Kssshhhhh... Kssshhhh... Hello?... Can you hear me?  Kssshhhh... Is anyone still out there? Ksshhh... I... I... don’t have much time.  This communication channel is very unstable so I will be brief.

My lack of posting recently is not because there is nothing to write about.  In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.  I have many articles in the queue but without time to put what little polish on them I typically do, half-finished in the queue they will stay. 

Among other things we are in the process of moving.   It is an exciting time filled with barely controlled chaos that will hopefully have its happy conclusion late next month.  Between now and then, though, I will have less and less time to, say, regale you with a twelve-page post on how disappointing store-bought edamame is, and more time to, say, doing pretty much the opposite of that.

I will say one thing on the moving front, though.  I have taken a contract out on myself.  

You read that right. 

Both GeneSplicer and Jimmydunes have been informed that if I am ever to utter the phrase “Honey, have you seen my croquet hat?” in a non-ironic way they are to kill me by whatever means they see fit. They would be doing both me and my son a kindness.  Fortunately, the extremely slim but nevertheless non-zero chance that I would have ever spoken these words has evaporated, so one less thing to worry about there.  There are other trigger-phrases that will put the contract into effect as well, but we are still hashing out the details on those.

Ksshhh... Uh-oh.  Kssh... Time to go... Kssh... I have just enough time to post this and the article after it... Ksshhh.... See, I have to go and help a church group make an underwater scene out of plyboard and swimming pool “noodles” for their Vacation Bible School...  Ksshh... Oh, crap... I hope they don’t think that is one of the trigger-phrases... Kshhhhh.... ABORT THE HIT... I REPEAT, ABORT THE Kssshhhhh....